High Sierra Adventure

As I sat working at my computer the other night, I became aware of a presence in the room where there should have been none. When I work at night, it is in a darkened office, illuminated solely by the light of the monitor. No one else in the house was awake. The dog was asleep on his bed in the garage. I should have been alone. Was there an intruder in the house? I turned to the door and illuminated by the night-light in the hallway was a small figure, slim, like the aliens in Close Encounters. My heart skipped several beats. It was brandishing a weapon. No it was clutching a yet smaller figure..a green one...a stuffed Grinch!

"Grandpa?"

"Why aren't you asleep sweetie?"

"I'm thirsty."

This was an old tactic. He really wasn't thirsty. It was a last, desperate attempt to push back the veil of night...to steal a few more momemts of awake before the sandman descended upon him and dragged him kicking and screaming to the land of pleasant dreaming. I knew how to handle this. I've been well trained.

"Okay. Get back in bed and I'll get you a glass."

"Okay."

He turned and headed across the hall to his room. I arose and was about to head to the kitchen for a sippy cup of the desired drink, when he stoped me.

"Grandpa?"

"What?"

"You don't need to get a cup."

"Not thirsty after all, huh?"

"No I'm still thirsty."

Okay, this was getting a bit weird. I wondered if he was sleep-walking or something.

"Then why don't you want water?"

"I do want water."

"Then why don't I have to get it?"

"Because there's a bottle of it in my backpack."

With that, he entered the bedroom and crawled back under the covers. I turned and followed.

"Okay. Where's the backpack?"

"Right there."

And he pointed to it, sitting right against the bed where he lay, not ten inches from his head. It was more obvious by the second that, as I had suspected, his true motivation wasn't thirst, but unwillingness to give in to sleep just as yet.

I opened the Scooby Doo backpack and sure enough, a bottle of water was in there. With a single twist of the wrist, I had the cap off and had the bottle in his hands. Like I said, I was trained.



Thirst wasn't an original plot twist for him. But the backpack next to him bit...that was new. Usually the excuse was that something he had to have was hanging just beyond his reach. This was bolder...more in my face. I was filled with a foreboding about what it might mean for the future. He took a single sip and handed me back the bottle and settling down beneath the covers took a parting shot.

"Grandpa?"

"Mmmm?"

"Can I play on your pluter?"

"No. It's way past your bedtime and I'm working on it. Night night"

"Night night...Grandpa?"

"What?" I said, struggling mightily to contain the growing exasperation in my voice.

"Can I watch a cartoon?"

Okay...two parting shots. I dropped the hammer.

"No. And if you don't go to sleep right now, I'm going to have to call your teacher."

"No no. I'll go to sleep grandpa."

I kissed him goodnight for like the fifth time of the night and he turned over clutching Grinch. I replaced the bottle in his pack...and stared at if for a long moment. Boy, did that take me back.
I began to reminisce about my late teen years when my close friends and I would take camping weekends into the wilderness of the High Sierras. Those were the days.